Why Budget Negotiations Succeed—and Why They Fail
City Journal Audio
Manhattan Institute
4.7 • 657 Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2019
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brian Riedl and Shai Akabas discuss the U.S. federal budget, budget negotiations, and why Congress hasn't addressed the rising national debt—even as it gets worse.
The case for a "grand deal" on the budget has never been more evident: within a decade, annual budget deficits are projected to exceed $2 trillion. Entitlement programs are projected to drive trillions in new government debt over the next few decades. Yet increasing partisanship and political polarization—both in Washington and among voters—have significantly diminished the likelihood of bipartisan cooperation to avoid a fiscal calamity.
Riedl is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of a new report, Getting To Yes: A History Of Why Budget Negotiations Succeed, And Why They Fail. The report analyzes the past 40 years of successful and failed budget negotiations in Congress. Akabas is the director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the 10 Box podcast. This is Paul Beston, managing editor of City Journal, sitting in for Brian Anderson. |
| 0:07.0 | If you're a layman like me, you might struggle to wrap your mind around the U.S. government's trillion-dollar budget deficits |
| 0:13.1 | and why our representatives in Washington can't come to an agreement to fix the problem. |
| 0:18.1 | This week on the show, we have Brian Reedidel and Shia Cabus to help explain what |
| 0:23.1 | goes into budget negotiations and what it will take for the U.S. to get a handle on its debt and deficits. |
| 0:29.7 | Brian Reidel is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and an expert on the federal budget, |
| 0:35.0 | deficits, and entitlement programs, and the author of a new report |
| 0:39.2 | called Getting to Yes, a history of why budget negotiations succeed and why they fail. You can find |
| 0:46.3 | a link to it in the show description. Shia Kabas is a director of economic policy at the Bipartisan |
| 0:52.6 | Policy Center. That's it for the introduction. |
| 0:55.9 | The conversation between Brian Reedle and Shia Khabis begins after the music. |
| 1:18.6 | Hello, this is Brian Reedle of the Manhattan Institute with City Journal's 10 Blocks podcast. |
| 1:28.3 | I'm here today with Shia Cabus of the Bipartisan Policy Center, who is going to be discussing budgets, budget negotiations, why we can't fix the budget deficit as it gets worse. |
| 1:32.3 | Welcome, Shai. |
| 1:33.3 | Thanks for having me, Brian. |
| 1:34.3 | Excited to be here. |
| 1:35.3 | Let me give you a little background on both of us. |
| 1:38.3 | I have been at the Manhattan Institute for two and a half years. |
| 1:41.3 | Before then, I was chief economist, the Senator Rob Portman for |
| 1:45.2 | six years. And for 10 years before that, I worked at the Heritage Foundation running their |
| 1:50.7 | budget shop. For campaign background, I was the budget policy director for the Romney |
| 1:57.0 | campaign in 2012 and the Rubio campaign in 2016. |
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